She’s Got Next: Kathrine Switzer

Kathrine Switzer has long been one of running’s most iconic figures. Not just for breaking barriers as the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon in 1967, but also for creating positive global social change. An author, speaker, and founder of the nonprofit 261 Fearless, Switzer was the feature presenter at the WNY Women’s Foundation “What She’s Made Of” event in 2024.

The following conversation is edited for length and clarity.

Let’s go back to that 1967 Boston Marathon. It was an incredible touchstone moment for the women’s sports movement, but I’m wondering how your relationship to that race has changed over time.

That’s a good question. First, the Boston Marathon was always the day in my coach’s life when he was a hero. He was an ordinary letter carrier in Syracuse, New York, schlepping through the snow. Every afternoon he would change his clothes and go out and train with the Syracuse University men’s cross-country team for the one day in his life when he was a hero, which was running the Boston Marathon. As he told me about it, I came to revere the Boston Marathon, too, so when I first ran it, it was really such a privilege to me.

My coach promised to take me to Boston if I could do the distance in practice. I did it and I was just thrilled I’d be going to Boston. We knew that I would be noticed, but we were not prepared for what happened.

I’ll just relive this for a moment here — in the race, the race director attacked me at the mile and the half mark, jumped off the press truck and screamed at me, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” He tried to rip my bib numbers off. And I was so terrified, and I was so embarrassed because I thought I had screwed up the big race. I was scared also because he was attacking me. My coach was screaming, “Leave her alone. She’s okay. I’ve trained her.” And then, of course, my boyfriend came along quickly and took him out with a shoulder charge that sent him off the racecourse.

After that I was pilloried by the media on the press truck. “When are you going to quit? When are you going to quit?” And I dug in and decided to finish. No matter what I was going to finish, because I knew if I didn’t finish, it would set women back. I realized that they were wanting me to quit only because I was a woman. They weren’t asking the men, when they were going to quit. They were only asking me when I was going to quit. They couldn’t believe a woman could do it, and I’d done it in practice, so I knew I could.

My relationship to the Boston Marathon now is one of looking back on a day that was the worst day of my life that actually became the best day of my life. Except for the two years after the incident and during COVID, I have gone back to every year to Boston. Boston is my touchstone. Boston is the thing where my life happened in a way where my dreams of creating women’s opportunities began, and with a negative incident, I had a very, positive vehicle to make an impact. Really, I don’t think a day passes when I don’t think of the moment in that race and the decision to finish.

I think the moral also of this story is that for every one of us to show up. Be intentional. Just finish the job even though it’s really tough, because then, you know that you can do anything.

I want to ask one more question about that race and the famous photo with race director Jack Semple trying to pull you off the course.  He was the villain on that day, but afterwards you made amends with him. What have you learned about changing minds of people when it comes to gender roles and stereotypes?

Some people come in charging and being aggressive, being angry, and of course, it’s justified for the most part. But my reasoning has always been that, if I do that, I’m only going to make this situation worse. I am going to take the high road and try to understand this person.

Certainly, right after the incident in the Boston Marathon, my coach was steaming mad and my boyfriend was still thinking about punching him. I truly didn’t like him either, but I was more afraid. Then I got to thinking, look, it’s a raining, freezing, snowy, sleety day. These are the worst conditions they’d ever had in the Boston Marathon at the time and he is an overworked race director. What he doesn’t like is people messing up his race. He thinks I’m a clown. He thinks I’m one of those fraternity boys from Harvard who shows up drunk and just wants to get on TV or something. I am not that person.

So you know what? I understand where he’s coming from, and I also understand where he stood, obviously, in regard to women. He was a product of his time, and when people are a product of their time, they don’t know anything else. It’s up to us to show them other things, not to punch them in the nose with it necessarily, but to show them another way.

By the 30K mark when I was going over Heartbreak Hill, I put Jock Semple behind me, and I said, I will show him that he’s wrong later. When I finished the race, I realized there were two things I really wanted to do. One was to become a better athlete, because I knew that is the one thing Jock Semple understood. If I were a really good athlete, he would have to pay attention to me. The point is this is that that was his language. I’m going to have to come to you with your language, not my language.

You have to be willing to work within the system. Nina Kuscsik, Sarah Berman and I worked hard to get women officially in the marathon in the United States. [While women ran in the Boston Marathon, their times were not recorded and a female category was not recognized until 1972]. That meant going to all those tedious Amateur Athletic Union meetings talking about the rules. How do we change those rules? Nina was very good at the rules. I was better at organizing events. But we had to work within the AAU and the Boston Athletic Association [which runs the Boston Marathon] to make that progress.

How do you making running that inclusive space for Black women, for Native American women, for, people who feel othered.

First, you need an introduction. I couldn’t just go over to the Navajo Reservation, walk in and say, “Hi, I’m Kathrine. I’m here to show you how to run.” It requires some finesse. With 261 Fearless, we’re trying to open channels in in Africa and you can’t just go into an African village. You need somebody to help you. It takes some work, but I feel if you are willing to meet people halfway, they’ll meet you halfway.

When you’re talking about how we come to other races, other ethnicities, other backgrounds, I have learned I need to not just tell you the way to do it. I need to be open to what you need, and I need to hear you.

I had a wonderful talk with Alison Mariella Désir, the author of “Running While Black.” She has an angry voice, and she admits that she has an angry voice, while I have a “let’s create the solution” voice. When I read her book, one of the things she wrote was that nobody came up to talk with her at all these races and meet runs. And I said that’s ridiculous. Everybody’s friendly. You just walk up to and say, “Hi, I’m Allison.”

What I didn’t know is that Black people do not go up to white people and say, “Hi, I’m Alison.” They have a thousand years of history of being persecuted and put down. They’re not going to walk up to me. So, what I need to do is walk up to them.

I even did an experiment. I went to a meet one month and saw a Black man standing by himself. Nobody was talking to him because, well, they didn’t know him, and he didn’t approach us. So, I went over to him, said hello and he was so happy to have somebody to talk to. He was new in town and was intimidated about walking up to strangers. I think we need to put out a helping hand.

We need to make ourselves vulnerable and accepting. We need to create spaces for other people, because their customs are different, their fears are different. I’m really proud of what I’m doing right now with 261 Fearless. We are creating runs and clubs, gatherings in different villages and cities all over the world. We’re now in 15 countries, and we just put our hand out and say this is non-competitive, non-judgmental. We just would love for you to come out and walk or run with us. And that’s really working, but you have to make the effort.

From your experience with 261 Fearless and creating women’s-only races, what have you learned about that business side of women’s sports and about that investment side of it?

For many years, I organized a series of women’s only races around the world, and the objective was to get as many countries and women out running as possible, because ultimately, I wanted the data and statistics from those events to show to the International Olympic Committee that women deserve to have longer distance events in the Olympic Games. I needed the countries, the continents and the numbers. We had the performances, and we also had to have the medical data to prove that your uterus was not going to fall out. I did that, and I must say, it was life changing when I saw women running in burkas and women running in bare feet because they didn’t have shoes. We got the data and statistics, but I always knew there were more women I wanted to reach. And even in the United States, I knew we weren’t reaching Indigenous women or Black women.

Then my career changed. I went into TV, commentary, book writing, etcetera, etcetera. Now fast forward and we’re at the Every Woman’s Marathon [held in November 2024] and they conscientiously had diverse representation using all different ethnicities, abilities, body types and backgrounds in their marketing and public relations.

And the result was two things. One, I would say this race had probably more women of color represented than any other race I’ve been to. Second was the fact that 42% of all the women running were running their first marathon. Both those things speak volumes about creating a non-intimidating, non-judgmental space.

What do you think it is about running that appeals to women so much that that we went from “women can’t run or their uterus will fall out,” to where women comprise more than half the field of all road races in the United States?

It’s instantly empowering for every woman. Let’s say you go out and walk and then jog a mailbox down your street. You can say, “I did that.” Then it becomes two mailboxes. Then it becomes a lamp post, etcetera. It’s very empowering.

It also really is very health giving, but the biggest thing is the empowering sense and the time efficiency. Women have kids a job, a dog, a house. They’ve got to do the laundry. So you get up at five in the morning, get the run done, and you’re set for the day. You can say, at least I’ve got that under my belt, and I can figure everything else out.

In simple terms, one reason why women love running is because it’s easy, it’s cheap and it’s totally accessible. You don’t need to go to a pool or a gym or a club or buy treadmill.

What can a girl or young woman do now who wants to make sports her profession?

I think it’s an interesting era right now to be a woman athlete, or a woman who’s interested in women’s sports, because there’s so many options available and so much discovery yet to happen. There are so many things that can be created that we can’t even imagine right now, because the space is wide open.

There are two avenues. One, she might want to become a professional athlete, and that requires not only a lot of work, a lot of talent too. Let’s just face it, sometimes you just don’t have the goods. We all know what that feels like at a certain point. It’s okay, because if you love it, you can work in it.

It could be in business management, it could be in finance, it could be in PR or marketing.  Be there, show up, and do what you love. Show up and volunteer for events in your town and then get the best education you can. What I want to see, and I hope to see, is more women get into coaching. A lot of the problems that have happened in running, particularly at a collegiate level, have been because coaches don’t understand that women were not small men, and that their bodies are different. We need more knowledge about women’s physiology and more women to coach.

Ready for more She's Got Next? Find the whole series here.